We have been in Australia for over 2 months but we still needed to see a very important corner of the country (while acknowledging there is SO much of this country still left for us to explore!). Far North Queensland (FNQ) is the gateway to the Tropical Rainforests but also the best way to get to the Great Barrier Reef. We have been very excited about seeing North Queensland so we had todo this before we left Australia. We booked 4 days in Port Douglas, 2 days in the Daintree rainforest and 3 days in Clifton Beach (just north of Cairns). It was an awesome decision and will go down as one of our highlights of our first trip to Australia. We tend to book city destinations in our first trip to a country but this time we made sure we stayed in some smaller towns so we could get out and see the amazing nature of Far North Queensland.
Our first stop was the town of Port Douglas. It was a beautiful little beach town with beach access to some mangrove forests. Unfortunately the amount of crocodiles combined with the box jellyfish stingers make the beaches not open for swimming. There are some netted swimming areas in some of the towns including Port Douglas but it doesn’t really make me feel comfortable getting in the water. There was still a lot to do walking the beaches and the rain forests. We heard that the best hikes were along the Mossman gorge so we spent our first day checking it out. It is very popular for people swimming in the Mossman river to escape the Queensland heat in the summer. But, on our trip, it was raining. The rivers were too swollen to allow safe swimming. We enjoyed the walk but didn’t think it was that breathtaking. We did enjoy walking the trails closer to Port Douglas and hanging out in town. We took a sunset river cruise up the river but didn’t see any crocodiles. Our highlight of Port Douglas may be the Cane Toad Racing show we saw at a local pizza restaurant. We watched a hokey frog racing contest that was really just a way to laugh at how Australians know how to have fun. We laughed a lot.
The biggest draw to North Queensland is the close access to the Great Barrier Reef. From Port Douglas, it only takes an hour and a half boat ride to get to see the fantastic coral of the outer reef. Meg’s knee still wasn’t feeling up to a snorkel trip so I endured the 90 minutes of up and down and up and down and up and down trip to the reef without her. Once I got to the reef, I saw some the most diverse and colorful coral that I have ever seen in my life. The fish were pretty cool too… and I spent 3 hours snorkeling the reef on the snorkel tour to check off another big item on my bucket list. I didn’t see any turtles and only 1 reef shark, but the reef garden was the highlight of the day. It was pretty expensive but I am happy I ended up paying for the tour to get all the way out to the outer reef. There were some cheaper snorkel tours to islands near Cairns that are technically on the Great Barrier reef, but don’t really have the biodiversity that I was able to see. I feel bad that Meg couldn’t go, but we are also on the same trip that started in Tahiti and the Cook Islands where she got to snorkel and see some fun fish and coral.
Our next stop was the Daintree rainforest. To get there, you need to take a rickety car ferry across the Daintree river to get to an off-the-grid stretch of Queensland. There isn’t a water or power system North of the river so all the tourist infrastructure needs to rely on wells and solar panels. We stayed in a little hut that wasn’t much more than a bedroom with a small bathroom. We ended up keeping our luggage in the car because there wasn’t any room for them in the cabin. But we loved it. Link here We were on Thornton beach which was so isolated and beautiful. We often were the only people walking the beach. This whole area was really a jungle. We have been in a lot of countries and I can’t think of any place which was more of a dense tropical rainforest than what we saw in Daintree. We went on several nature trails that were all on fantastic raised boardwalks that the Australian government has paid for. We were in the National Park but didn’t have to pay any entrance fees. The government believes that this jungle environment should be experienced by everyone. We saw a lot of birds and took a lot of amazing pictures. The only regret was not seeing a Southern Cassowary. They are huge birds about the size of Emu’s and hang out in these rainforests. We looked hard but just couldn’t find one.
Our last stop in Australia was in Clifton Beach. It is a community just a few miles North of Cairns. Not many restaurants but it has a lot of beaches and more trails to explore. We saw a lot more birds and the life list is now up to 850. Australia has really helped my bird count. The first day, we did a long walk along the esplanade in Cairns which is the big town around here with a population of 170,000 people. The best part of Cairns is their Brisbane-like beach-side swimming pool. If you can’t swim in the ocean because of crocs and jellyfish, then a sandy beach swimming pool is the next best thing. Our last couple of days in Clifton Beach was really some time to relax and reflect on Australia. I will write another blog post this summer or maybe sooner about all the things we learned during our Australia travels. I might be too busy in the next few weeks to get all my thoughts down in a blog….
We are now finally heading to another country after being in New Zealand and then Australia for so long. We have direct flights from Cairns to Tokyo! Japan is a place that we have been wanting to see for a long time. We have been through Tokyo on layovers but this trip will give us 24 days to really see a lot of the country. We are pretty excited!